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by Wowfunhappy 2058 days ago
It really is amazing how big a difference this makes.

I've started using Apple's Aperture software recently (I'm well aware it's been discontinued). I really like it, but my biggest frustration is that it's difficult to learn how to do new things, because "aperture" is a generic word in photography. I can't search for the name and get results about the software.

4 comments

One of my favorite mobile games is Antiyoy, by Yiotro (https://github.com/yiotro/Antiyoy) who also created other games like Vodobanka, Achikaps, and Bleentoro.

The creator mentioned that he picked the names because they were pronounceable, unique, memorable, and searchable. That misses out on meaningfulness and familiarity, but those are expensive - by dropping those requirements, you gain easy SEO, trademarks, domains, etc. A big company knowing they're going to sell millions of copies can spend 5 figures on a domain and 6 figures on SEO, but I don't think it's worth it for most startups.

Huh, I play these and I didn't know that's why that had these names, I assumed they were compound words in some language I didn't know. This is like a reverse "XKCD" naming convention.

Also relevant: "Change Your Name" http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html

>I'm well aware it's been discontinued

Limiting the dates to indexes before 2016 might help (at least with google). You can usually train google to get you what you want after a few searches. This was initially a problem with the Elixir programming language, but it learned what I actually wanted it started letting me just type in the term elixir without specifying it was a programming language. On other computers not associated with that account, it does revert back to the not-so-useful results.

e.g.

    apple "aperture" color correction before:2016
> but it learned what I actually wanted it started letting me just type in the term elixir without specifying it was a programming language

Oh, you know what, this might be largely my own fault. I purposefully use Startpage.com as my search engine in order to avoid getting customized results (while still using Google's index).

I worry that customized results put me in a filter bubble—but they certainly have their advantages!

The band Chvrches chose to use the the Roman "u" to spell their name so they'd be easier to search.
Kind of hard to pronounce though. Like that jewellery brand, seemingly pronounced 'buffelgary' or something.
Sorta. It's still pronounced "churches", but it's definitely a common joke to pronounce it chivurches.
See also "Pages", "Numbers", "Keynote"...

Apple don't give a fuck.

No lies detected, but because they aren't professional software I don't have to search for stuff as often. And the other "Professional" Apple app I use is Final Cut Pro, which doesn't similarly have this problem.